BOXING

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20126, 20 April 1928, Page 5

BOXING

HEENEY’S CHANCE TO PREPARE FOR TUNNEY PASSENGER ON LEVIATHAN (A. & N.Z.) LONDON, Apil 18. Heeney .has booked his passage by the Leviathan.

He will immediately go into training in anticipation of meeting Tunney.

GRIME NO BETTER

OPERATION TO NOSE (A. & N.Z.) NE WYORK, April 18. Grime’s condition has not greatly improved since the operation on his nose. He is now suffering with a cold and pieces of bone are still coming from the nose. He will go to the country to-morrow to begin light work. No further bouts have yet been scheduled.

THE ROAD TO WEALTH

MILLIONAIRES OF THE RING TOP NOTCHERS’ EARLY STRUGGLES. Whenever I see a young boxer, particularly if he threatens to grow into a hea\ y -weight, jump from comparative obscuiity to sudden prominence I thinK of the story of the man who cursed his luck because he had bashed his nose through falling over something—to find, on investigation, that the obstacle that had tripped him was a bag of gold, writes Trevor C. Wignail, in cue London Daily Telegraph. It is true to say of present-day professional pugilism that, only one new comer xu every fifty c.»n hope to make a decent Jiving out of it, and that despite the facts that purges are bigger than t»ei they we.’d bafore, r.*J<nda ices greater, and ini u*est more marled and s’, stained. Thj ords against a beginner making a fortune &:< at lea>t two hundred to one, while there is the further circumstance that there is no known instance of a novice gaining a championship or anything approaching it. Novelists are fond of writing about fighters who stalk into a ring absolutely unknown to all present and without sufficient experience to tic on a glove, and who, in the first few minutes of a contest, lift a title by the simple and nonchalant expedient of clipping the contemptuous holder on the chin with a left hook or a right, cross. That sort of thing doesn’t happen in the real life of prize-fighting. There isn’t a champion to-day who cannot look back on years of hard slogging, on bitter disappointments, and, in many cases, on periods of poverty and sheer starvation. Jack Dempsey, who has made more money with his fists than any other boxer who can be named, was once so desperately poor that he was reduced to sneaking food from the free-luncTx counters of San Franciuco saloons. The night he received nearly £200,000 for losing to Gene Tunney he told me that there had been many occasions when he had fought like an animal for the equivalent of a few shillings. Gene Tunney “on the Road.’’ When Dempsey was fighting fourrounders in California towns, only a year or so before he became the champion, his usual reward averaged £lO. What was more—and he stressed this—those battles were in many cases infinitely harder than the higher-paid ones that came later. When Dempsey was slamming his way to the heights the TMid he waa compelled to travel was among the most heart-breaking ever encountered by a human being. There is a disposition to think tsm.t Tunney has missed the trials and the tribulations that beset nine pugilists out of ten. It is not a correct relief. He was for seven years a pedestrian on what has been called the Cauliflower Highway; making a living, it is true, but not a sufficiently good one to ensure a comfortable old age. There were nights when he slept on a bench in a park, and plenty of days when his belt had to be tightened. How many people know that about a year before he defeated Dempsey he was ordered out of a Philadelphia ring because the referee came to the conclusion that he was either not trying or that his skill was not high enough for him to be permitted to remain? Yet that is the fact. When Tunney next returned to Philadelphia it was to do something that has since placed him among the millionaires of his cous try. There is romance in that; but easily the most romantic figure in the fighting of to-day is the New Zealandwr, Tom Heeney. So far as I can tell, he has never had a counterpart. When a pugilist nears the age of thirty without reaching a higher position than that of a deputy or a “trialhorse” it may usually be taken for granted that he is a failure. That, to put it quite frankly, was how Heeney was regarded in England twelve months ago. He was so short-armed, so lacking in a punch, and so deficient in personality and pugilistic attractiveness that promoters in London (who now are (falling over each other in efforts to get him to sign his name to a con I tract) only smiled when he asked them I for an engagement. To-day, both as a fighter and as a drawing-card, he I ranks with Tunney and Dempsey, j Heeney, in a phrase, is the classic I example of a boxer finding world-wide j fame at the very time when his age land accomplishments prompted everyone to believe that his insignificant day was over and that he was not fit to appear in a preliminary bout. His earnings to-day are those of a great lawyer or a film star. When he left London, not much more than a year ago, he could hardly buy himself a packet of cigarettes.

His case is, of course, exceptional, but it explains why it is that even the boxer who is knocked out every time he puts up his hands still retains in his heart the hope that springs eternal.

Human Gold Mines. I have never yet met a fighter who didn’t sec a gleam of brightness in the worst of the hidings that was sent his way. He thinks of: . Fitzsimmons and Jimmy Wilae, who were laughed to scorn wnen they first fought before big crowds. Jim Corbett, who by everyone who knew him, was told at the outset of his career to go back to the bank where he was a clerk. Jim Jeffries, who was given a job as a cleaner of a gymnasium when he first applied for the lowly post of a sparring partner. Heeney, who was actually on his way home to New Zealand to seek work when he achieved the apparently impossible. I have been watching boxing long enoi gh now to realise that the man who seems to be a square peg in a round hole may in reality be a human gold mine in the making. I remember that when I first gazed on Jimmy Wilde (it was in a booth) I thought in my (then) igntrance that the person responsible for introducing him to the business of fighting deserved to be prosecuted. th u n f<’w yt?rs the frail Welshman we Uu- g:ea-est fistic aitist this country has ever had. The first time I saw Georges Carpentier was in a Paris hall. He was beaten and pummelled and punished in such unmerciful fashion by an Eng- , lish youth who called himself You.tg Snowball that the contest had to be stopped. Everybody knows what Carpentier did in the 3 r ears that followed. From the money-making point of view alone —and that, I am convinced, is solely what the average fighter thinks about —he must be second on the list to Dempsey. And 1 could go on giving names like these. Even Phil Scott, the present heavy-weight champion of Great Britain, turned his back on boxing at one time and became a fireman. That was because the outlook, as it appeared to him, was not bright.

If someone came to me to-morrow and, by some miracle, was able to guarantee that the youth he wanted to “sell” me would be heavy-weight champion in five years’ time, I think I would be willing to pay £lOO,OOO to clinch the deal.

The youth would be worth considerably more than that, it may bo remarked; Tunney’s remuneration for his thirty-minutes effort against Dempsey at Chicago last September was a litr.le over £200,000. And the rate of pay for champions is going up. It should not cause surprise if for his next fight Tunney demands a flat guarantee of £300,0000. He has tol/i me that he expects to net exactly two million doi.ars (rough’y, £400,000) for one fight before he finishes. Is it any wonder that Tunney anticipates being the richest man prizcfightin ghas ever known when he retires? If he lasts another three or four years —as he probably will—he should be worth at least a couple of million pounds. England’s Young Hopes. This possibility makes all the more interesting the fact that there are in England today two young men who may rise to the same eminence as Tunney. One is Lon Harvey, who was born at Piymcuth, and the other Donald Shortland, who comes from Sheffield. The latter, at 17 years of age, is already a full-fledged heavyweight, and it is likely that by the time ho reaches manhood he will be even bigger and stronger than the gigantic Jeffries. Tremendous stature and much physical power is not an essential to a heavy-weight (witness Fitzsimmons and Tom Sayers, who were little more than middle-weights), but it is undoubtedly an asset. When Jeffries was in his prime and relying solely on his great strength there wasn’t a man breathing who had a chance of dropping him, which is more than can be said for anyone before his time or since. So that Shortland is well-equipped even now, in his boyhood. If he climbs to the final rung he will make a larger fortune in one year than any six British boxers made between them throughout their careers. The same is true of Harvey, but if he becomes the heavy-weight champion —and, on his recent form, that is beginning to look feasible—he will create a record that should stand; he will be the only boy prodigy to aeeomplisti this. Harvey has been a professional since he was about fourteen, and now, just past twenty-one, he is fighting not only better than over but with a degree of skill that is forcing even the pessimistic to agree that laurels we have long lost may yet be brought back to tins country. Harvey, in my view, judged solely as a prospect, is easily the most promising we have.

For myself, I have by no moans given up hope of seeing the day when an English fighter will rule the heavyweight roost.

But (thinking only of the wonderful rewards—rewards no other profession offers) wouldn’t I like to be in hi» shoes!